Mike Pence

Surely all of us remember (as much as I’d kinda like to forget) January sixth of last year. The Donald was pressuring Mike Pence. I had to do a bit of searching, since current events are overwhelming the search engines, but I finally found an article that actually quoted what D. T. said at the time:

“We will never give up. We will never concede,” said Trump.

“Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country,” he continued.

“And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”

https://www.the-sun.com/news/4400681/january-6-2021-timeline-capitol-riots/

The big news of February fifth (other than the death of a Groundhog) is that Pence said D. T. was wrong, and D. T. stated “Just saw Mike Pence’s statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible,” Trump wrote in an official statement. 

Trump argued that if “obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities exist” Pence could have done something about it.” Quote from Fox News.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-responds-pence-overturn-election

Taking Trump at his word, I’ll accept that the Mike Pence could have overturned the election in the event “obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities exist”. But as I’ve already written, at least in the two most likely states to have turned for Trump given fraud or irregularities, there were not enough to merit overturning the election. Likely Pence (and the first conservative Supreme Court in about eighty years) felt the same way, or they likely would have sided with Trump. Here is my blog post if you haven’t read it and wish to follow my reasoning more closely.

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/161

Granted, if I were being thorough, I could have gone through more states, but I felt if the two most likely to flip don’t have adequate evidence, it gets less and less likely with every state you investigate.

We’ve also established in a previous blog post that Donald Trump did in fact intend to overthrow the government, or that he is just clueless. For the sake of argument, let’s assume Donald Trump’s intelligence (his firing of Lou Ferrigno notwithstanding). Again, blog post included in the off chance you haven’t read it and wish to follow my reasoning: https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/271

I used to be a conservative Republican, before Trump. I voted for him (the first time). I could try to reconstruct the thought that went into supporting him, but I don’t know that I can do the mental gymnastics to do more than a few thought experiments (kinda like watching The Man in the High Castle, or Fatherland) speculating about how things might have gone if history had gone differently.

For me to still be a supporter of Trump, I would have to believe that our Republic is finished, that it has been conquered or is destined to be conquered by a Dystopian, Totalitarian regime, and furthermore that Trump would likely be indispensable to the resistance a la George Washington, Charles De Gaulle, or Oliver Cromwell.

I know no better model of a successful revolution than the American, so let’s begin there. The very foundation of our nation (other then Christianity and English common law) is the Declaration of Independence. So what does it have to say about this situation? “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Likely I’ll have to explore this in a later post, this one has already gotten wordy. But we don’t have a unanimous declaration from all of the states, all we have is an election. Totally different context. We are not dissolving any political bands at this point, we are already one of the great superpowers of all time, and the only declaration of causes is : “Just saw Mike Pence’s statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible.”

An overly simplistic argument, but there is nothing in Trump, or any of his statements, that make me willing to risk “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

But the topic is far from exhausted. Perhaps a Civil War is what is called for. But remember, our founding fathers and even the Confederacy were far more deliberative than a bunch of social media hacks writing mean tweets. If your gonna ask me to fight, please make it a cause worth fighting for, and not just Trump’s ego.